The Rent Is Too Damn High (No, Really)

It's a terrible time to be a renter in America—and it's only getting worse.

You've probably heard that it makes good financial sense not to spend more than 30 percent of your income on housing, and yet, according to a report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, roughly half of all renters in the U.S. do just that. Even more concerning: About 25 percent of renters spend more than half their monthly pay on rent.

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Now, Harvard and Enterprise Community Partners, a national affordable housing and community development organization, are predicting that roughly one-third of renters will drop more than half their monthly pay on housing in the next 10 years. And that, as The Atlantic notes, is pretty much a best-case scenario.

"Even in the unlikely event that income growth greatly outpaces rent gains, the number of severely cost-burdened renters will remain near current record levels," said Christopher Herbert, managing director of Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, in a statement.

The reason for these steep rents: Lots of renters in the market have created huge demand.

According to The Wall Street Journal, homeownership in the U.S. is at its lowest level in the last 50 years. Meanwhile, single-family rentals are on the rise, climbing to 13 percent of the overall housing stock, the Journal reported. That's up from 9 percent in 2005.

Stagnant wages, high rental prices, and decreased employment opportunities during (and following) the recession may continue to play out over the next decade for Millennials. Since the generation hasn't been able to accumulate much wealth, they're less likely to be prepared to buy homes or to have savings or other investments that can defray some of the burden of rental costs.